If there was one thing I was good at as a child, it was saving. My dad always made sure to encourage us to save and even rewarded us whenever we saved to a certain amount. He did all of that because he knew the importance of saving money and wanted to encourage us at an early age to be able to save money and not spend lavishly, a lesson I learnt but couldn't hold on to it.
I was doing so well until I went away for school and was met with lots of expenses. Every penny I had was used to pay for one thing or the other and I found myself being broke and penniless. All of the money I had dissappear just after my first semester in my year one and suddenly, I found myself in survival mode and saving was the last thing on my mind.
I remember during my last days in school, how I had told my friends about how I would go back to saving lots and lots of money because I was about to be done with the one thing that was sucking my money dry, school....but I was wrong.
After I graduated, I tried bringing back the old saving habit but everytime I saved a penny, I saw myself going back to spend it. Knowing that I had money saved somewhere gave me confidence to spend the cash I had in my hands lavishly, so I decided to try a different approach, I decided to invest it.
That didn't work either as I would go to those investments, take my money from it and do with it what I wanted. It suddenly felt like the concept of saving was a strange one to me, one I could no longer understand. But I wasn't ready to give up yet so I tried other things.
I sent money to friends for them to hold it for me, asking them not to give it back to me no matter what until a particular date. That worked for a while and my friend made sure to say no whenever I asked for money but when it eventually got to the date that I had given to them and they gave me the money back, I would spend it again, lavishly.
Usually I would have given up at this point but seeing how important this is, I'm willing to keep on trying until I get it right. Hopefully I get to bring back the little kid in me who was able to save so much money that my dad decided to gift me a walkman.